I'm a libertarian lawyer and college professor. I blog on religion, history, constitutional law, government policy, philosophy, sexuality, and the American Founding. Everything is fair game though. Over the years, I've been involved in numerous group blogs that come and go. This blog archives almost everything I write.
Email your questions or comments to rowjonathan@aol.com

Wednesday, July 07, 2010

More From DG Hart on Lillback:

Here. Dr. Hart cites my American Creation co-blogger Brad Hart, but mistakenly calls him a "history professor." If Brad's writing can fool an eminent scholar like DG Hart, he must be doing something right.

George Washington was not an evangelical Christian -- Lillback admits that. Lillback is a leader in and a scholar of reformed Calvinistic theology. Lillback's dilemma is that he wants to claim someone with whom he admittedly has religious differences. So he'll concede only when it's so obvious and otherwise interpret the facts to fit his happy ending.

For instance, in 20,000 pages of recorded words of GW, the words "Jesus Christ" are found once, and one other time JC is mentioned by example, not name. Neither of which are written in GW's hand, but by an aide and both of these are in public addresses. In all of his many private letters, though "Providence" and other generic God words are mentioned very often, the name or person of Jesus is not mentioned ever. You never see "Father, Son, Holy Spirit," from GW's words. And the one time "Redeemer" is mentioned, it's from an address by the Continental Congress that GW had reproduced for his troops.

This dynamic, at the very least, proves GW was not an evangelical. But Lillback spins it as GW was a low church latitudinarian orthodox Trinitarian Anglican and claims it the custom of them not to mention Jesus. Well, they may not have talked about Jesus as much as the evangelicals did, but they didn't systematically avoid talking about Jesus, as though they had no relationship with Him like GW did. GW, from what we can tell, rarely had Jesus on his mind.